Chapter 27: The Hero's Ambition

  Bai Chongxi was woken up by his subordinates just as he had fallen asleep. He was so angry that he couldn't sleep for the rest of the night. Just when it was getting light and he had finally dozed off again, he was woken up once more! It was Tan Xiao's orderly coming to inform him: The division commander was still busy accompanying German guests, so he didn't have time to attend to this matter himself. If Director Bai was in a hurry, he could arrange for Deputy Chief of Staff He Shaotang to take his place and receive the visitors.

  Bai Chongxi, who was in a fit of rage, had no choice but to slam the pillow onto the ground like a scolding wife. Fortunately, he could still enter the barracks of the First Army, so it wouldn't spread that Bai Chongxi couldn't even get past the gate of the First Army.

  Bai Chongxi originally intended to just take a casual stroll and then return - he had already been ridiculed by Tan Xiang to the point of losing all interest. However, after visiting the barracks, he changed his mind. Like everyone else, he was shocked by the appearance of the barracks: this was not the Chinese army, nor was it any country's army in this era!

  "What's going on, Commander? This can't be a show, right? I arrived when the sky had just brightened up, how come there were only a few soldiers left in the barracks? Could it be that they've been cleaning up all night, waiting for me, Bai Mou?" Bai Chongxi finally found a weakness in Ye Yishi's army. When he entered Ye Yishi's military camp at less than 7 o'clock in the morning, there was no one in either the barracks or the cafeteria.

  "Deputy Director Bai spoke too heavily. Our soldiers in the First Division get up at 5:30 every morning for exercise, have breakfast at 6:00, and must arrive at their respective training locations before 6:30, regardless of wind or rain. Now that it's getting light later, Deputy Director Bai got up a bit late, so he didn't see it." He Shaotang saw that Bai Chongxi's words were somewhat sharp, so he also spoke bluntly and said that Bai Chongxi got up late.

  Bai Chongxi's psychological scolding: If I hadn't stayed up all night, would I have gotten up late?! But thinking about it, usually I don't get up that early either, so I didn't say anything. When they arrived at the training ground, Bai Chongxi finally saw Tan Xiao laughing, Tan Xiao was accompanying a group of Germans watching the basic training project for soldiers. So he subconsciously walked over.

  "Ha, Deputy Director Bai, I didn't expect you to get up so early. Otherwise, I would have had my subordinates start training half an hour later, and we wouldn't have had to split our troops into two routes..." Tan Xiao was very enthusiastic, but still said that Bai Chongxi got up half an hour late.

  The soldiers are now watching a special shooting training: the trenches are filled with smoke, and there are broken guns scattered everywhere, giving the feeling that they have just been bombarded by heavy artillery. At this time, a group of soldiers rushed out of the bunker, but only half of them had guns. Those who had guns quickly occupied various shooting positions, while those without guns collected the broken guns, disassembling and reassembling them, and surprisingly managed to assemble a batch of usable guns. Others were frantically using their helmets to scoop up dirt from the trenches into bamboo sieves or searching for something in half-broken wooden boxes and "corpses".

  Tan Xiao looked at his watch and suddenly waved his hand: "Stop! Report the number!"

  "A row of determinations still has twenty-eight people with combat effectiveness! Nine guns, 131 rounds of ammunition collected, seventeen hand grenades, four rifle grenades..."

  "This is a test of the soldiers' adaptability in special environments, such as sudden artillery or air raids... My soldiers are very familiar with collecting weapons on the battlefield, you saw that at least one platoon can temporarily assemble eight rifles and collect 124 rounds of ammunition..." Tan Xiao explained the training, while the German translator translated the content, and Bai Chongxi was able to hear Tan Xiao's explanation firsthand.

  At this time, the "enemy" had attacked to 500 meters, and snipers and machine gunners began to fire. With the continuous short bursts of light machine guns and the cold shots of snipers, the number of attackers began to decrease significantly. When they reached 250 meters, full-scale shooting started... In the end, only six people out of the 200-strong attacking force reached the edge of the trench!

  "Of course, in actual combat it won't be this one-sided, this is just shooting practice!" Tan Xiao said "However, under normal circumstances, my troops' hit rate for moving targets at a speed like this within 250 meters will not be lower than 30%..."

  It's too terrifying! Bai Chongxi thought to himself, his heart racing as he counted the soldiers' firing speed. Before the "enemy" charged up, each person had fired at least twenty times. Just think about it, a battalion-level charge was being wiped out with more than half of them killed - not even counting the machine gunners' achievements! And there were only 28 people on the defensive side!

  He didn't know what they had practiced half an hour ago, but seeing the German observers' faces full of surprise, he could be sure that the content was very wonderful or very novel. "Excuse me, Commander Tan, how many combat troops in your unit can reach this level?" Bai Chongxi didn't believe that all the soldiers in the First Division were at this level.

  "It's about over six thousand people." This is a very proud number, with about 30% of the soldiers reaching this astonishing standard. He paused for a moment: "Three months later, it can reach ten thousand people, half a year later this is the basic standard for old soldiers..."

  This time, not only was Bai Chongxi greatly surprised, but also the German officers were shocked by the soldiers' progress speed. The difference is that Bai Chongxi was skeptical, while the Germans completely believed in Tan Xiao's words.

  In the next two hours, a variety of wonderful training projects and unique assessment methods left the Germans and Bai Chongxi stunned. The level of training and assessment in this camp is higher than that of any military academy in the world they know! Just from the combat skills alone, soldiers who come out of here are all king-level soldiers when they go to other troops!

  "Alright, everyone, the observation for this morning is over. We will have lunch on the battlefield and then watch a real 'battle'!" Tan Xiao loudly announced. Then there were soldiers digging smoke tunnels in the ground, cooking food, everything was done in a hidden form. The Germans didn't know what to do, but this made Bai Chongxi extremely embarrassed: his Guangxi troops basically had no units that would dig smoke tunnels for cooking, as soon as the troops opened fire, it would be a large area of smoke and fog. He himself also knew that this was calling for cannon fire - the enemy's cannon fire. But his troops were just at this level!

  Those Germans thought it was very interesting, they also started to work together with the soldiers and Tan Xiao to make a combat meal. This made Bai Chongxi feel deeply moved: since he became a squad leader, he had never done this before, now looking at Tan Xiao's skillful degree, I estimate that he usually trains himself!

  Rong Hui watched from the side with great joy: "It turns out he's a man who can cook, really didn't expect that..."

  It wasn't long before lunch was ready, but it was a particularly simple combat ration: each serving of rice had a piece of meat in the middle, and that piece of meat was obviously made from dried meat rehydrated with water. This was too simple, right? Rong Hui looked at it and felt a bit like she couldn't eat it.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, my soldiers, my revered Chinese soldiers, are fighting with even less than this! To save food, water and time, the soldiers in the trenches often can't eat hot meals. They just stuff some fried noodles into their mouths, maybe not even dried meat, then swallow a mouthful of water, and continue to fight! The brave warriors who defend the country's territory and dignity can eat it, why can't we? This is a sumptuous feast! A sumptuous feast that can only be eaten outside the artillery bombardment zone! Everyone, eat more, no afternoon tea!"

  The last sentence brought a burst of laughter from the Germans, and everyone began to stuff their mouths with food. Bai Chongxi looked at Rong Hui, who was really unable to eat anymore and was embarrassed - he knew her, they had traded French-made military supplies, what could he do to help her? At this time, he saw a German, the Chief of the Army General Staff Manstein, walk over and hand Rong Hui a large piece of chocolate.

  "Hey, that's something only high-ranking wounded soldiers, like battalion commanders or war heroes get to eat!" Tan Xiao rushed over a few steps, pretending to grab it, and everyone burst out laughing. "If I were the wounded soldier, I'd definitely want to give my chocolate to this beautiful lady!" Goodrian also joined in on the joke.

  It seems that Tan Xiang and this group of Germans get along very well! Bai Chongxi felt more and more afraid of Tan Xiang, the terror of Tan Xiang's army - the first division stationed in the defense zone just pressed on the throat of the Guangxi-Guangdong road where the Guangxi Army was going north! Moreover, Tan Xiang seemed to have no intention of showing kindness to the Guangxi system at all!

  After lunch, everyone set off for the rehearsal area, which was surprisingly far away, so everyone got on horseback. Along the way, Tan Xiao kept introducing the plants on both sides of the road - "This is Longchuan flower, it will bloom in a few months and it's very vibrant! Oh, that's Wuzhi Maotao, it's a Chinese medicine, can also be used to make soup! Hehe, see? That clump of particularly green one is Duan Chang Cao! It's highly toxic, can kill cows, if you want to eradicate it, just digging it up won't work, it will grow back quickly, I have a secret recipe...

  Including the German delegation, although there were also many nature lovers among them, everyone was puzzled as to why Tan Xiao suddenly became a biologist. However, out of politeness and interest in exotic species, everyone's eyes continued to follow Tan Xiao's whip as it wandered far and near in the wilderness. It was a very quiet wilderness, occasionally seeing small birds jumping between plants, if not for Tan Xiao's explanation, this journey would be quite boring? Someone thought, but why not talk about military affairs? Others wondered.

  Suddenly, hoofbeats came from ahead and quickly drew near: six mounted Japanese soldiers!

  Six Japanese soldiers, tall Western horses, neat and tidy, armed with live ammunition, equipped with a machine gun, are coming towards us!

  Everyone suddenly became tense: When did Zeroling have Japanese soldiers!?

  Tan laughed and swung his whip, everyone followed him running up the mountain slope at an angle. When they reached the top of the slope, they saw: Oh my god! A team of Japanese soldiers, about two thousand people, were approaching in the distance in a marching column. The scouts and guerrilla fighters around them were scattered five hundred meters away from the column to carry out sentry duties, as required by their infantry drill manual. In the middle of the Japanese army's column, there were ten cars pulling a tightly covered four-square trailer, it was unknown what it was...

  Many people were getting anxious and kept looking at Tan Xiao, of course, some people suddenly realized: the drill has started!

  Bai Chongxi was one of the people who understood what was going on, but he never expected that Tan Xiao's drill would actually be an attack on the Japanese! Moreover, the realism of the drill left him speechless: all the communication and coordination between the Japanese troops along the way were in Japanese! As for their equipment, with his experience studying in Japan, it was clear at a glance that this was the elite unit of the Japanese army.

  Slowly, the people in the observation group began to understand, but everyone was just whispering, no one spoke loudly, as if they were afraid of disturbing those "Japanese soldiers".

  That team of "Japanese soldiers" crept in like a yellow snake, slowly swimming into the road that the observation group had taken on their way here...

  Suddenly, without any warning signs, the attackers opened fire!

  In those wild fields, where Tang Xiao had just guided them to observe from a distance as a biologist, countless firepower points appeared magically! Several flat-shooting artillery positions were distributed about 800-900 meters away from the main road, and the six-pound cannons began precise shooting, with each shell accurately hitting the four-square trailers pulled by cars. The scouts and rangers scattered in the wild fields suddenly suffered sniping from snipers. The heavy machine gun positions crossed fire wildly, sweeping the advancing troops at a distance of 700-800 meters, while the charging vanguard was not rushing forward in clusters as usual, but rather advancing rapidly in an orderly manner with a strange attack formation: alternating cover between machine gunners and riflemen, suppressing explosions from hand grenades and rifle grenades, cleverly using various terrain undulations to evade enemy fire and visibility. They quickly crossed hundreds of meters of open fields and began close combat with the "Japanese army". The follow-up advancing side, under the cover of the assault team, began to advance in larger units, quickly forming a dense encirclement.

  The heavy firepower of the attacking side, including flat-shooting cannons, mountain guns, howitzers, and small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, had all been fired, and the entire road was shrouded in smoke - it was clear that if these were not specially made exercise shells, the road surface would have become a slaughterhouse by now!

  The Japanese army was already heavily wounded and unable to form a military unit: the best of them, who reacted quickly and launched a counterattack, were continuously attacked by directional mines when they rushed towards the roadside ditches, small hills, and depressions, with only one in ten surviving! The rest, under the crazy sweep of various heavy firepower from the attacking side, could not organize a counterattack at all. Every machine gun, grenade launcher, and infantry cannon had a sniper taking care of it, and those who approached were killed!

  A whole army without heavy weapons support was quickly attacked by the assault troops of the attacking side, and then surrounded and shot.

  At the beginning of the attack, a team of about three hundred people in full-body camouflage uniforms suddenly rushed up to the mountain where Tan Xiao and others were watching. Then they completely ignored the members of the observation group and started earthwork construction near them, even beside them, building a blocking position for reinforcements. They used a special low-explosive to speed up the construction of the fortifications. Although there were many experts among the onlookers, who were attracted by many subtle tactical details on the battlefield, they still had some perception of what was happening around them: these people built temporary field fortifications too quickly!

  In less than twenty minutes, a cleverly constructed ambush position utilizing various terrain features was already built! Moreover, the ambush troops were still reinforcing their position: in the eyes of most onlookers, this was already an excellent ambush position - with scattered foxholes, zigzag trenches, circular command posts and heavy machine gun positions, deep mortar emplacements only exposing the muzzle... But apparently, in the eyes of the First Regiment's drillmaster, it was still far from satisfactory! This ambush unit finally stopped after nearly forty minutes of work, by which time they had even completed two anti-tank gun emplacements and camouflaged their fortifications with various explosive traps! According to Bai Chongxi's concept, this ambush position was absolutely no longer a temporary fieldwork, but basically a field stronghold! If the Guangxi Army were to build such a fortification, it would take at least ten hours of continuous work, and it would be impossible to achieve such a high level of layout and camouflage! The First Regiment's battalion completed this in just forty minutes, thanks to their good training and specialized tools and equipment! And this was still a temporary fieldwork - so how solid were the First Regiment's strongholds?! He suddenly remembered a phrase from one of his subordinates who had coincidentally gone with the Fifteenth Army to observe the First Regiment's training at Chenjiawan: "If you encounter the First Regiment on the battlefield, either surrender or run fast, otherwise there is absolutely no way to survive!"

  Yes, absolutely no survivors! The "Japanese army" on the battlefield has been declared by the referee: two thousand one hundred and thirty-six people, all annihilated!

  At the moment when the basic fortifications of the blocking camp were just repaired, that is, 20 minutes after the attack started, the referee had already raised the flag to end the battle, and the attackers began to clean up the battlefield! Cleaning up the battlefield was also part of the exercise: the victors had begun to clear away the "corpses", stripping them bare except for their loincloths. Who could be so familiar with disarming Japanese equipment without professional training? It's certain that Tang Xiao's training included lessons on how to help the Japanese "remove their makeup"!

  Soon, the exercise data began to emerge. The assault troops had a total of 832 people with heavy firepower, and another 305 people were responsible for blocking enemy reinforcements. Even if all were counted, it was only about half of the strength of the defenders, but the result was that 22 people were killed and 64 injured, including five who were accidentally injured by their own people or fell and injured during the charge!

  If it were real combat, the situation would be even more out of hand! This is the unanimous view of all onlookers: whether German or Guixi troops, facing such an attack, it would be impossible to put up resistance like the "Japanese Army" in the exercise, and they might surrender within ten minutes!

  When everyone was shocked and began to go down the mountain to watch the battlefield, the exercise had not ended yet. The signalman of the attacking side gave a signal for covering withdrawal, and those blocking soldiers began to destroy their fortifications in sections, withdrawing alternately. The whole process was as strict and tacit as the previous battle, which was no less impressive in the eyes of the insiders!

  Now, all the observers finally understood why Tang Xiao had been desperately drawing their attention to the wilderness all along - in fact, they themselves had experienced the battlefield as potential targets of attack, whether it was those German veterans who survived World War I or Bai Chongxi, a Guilin general familiar with the southern landscape. No one detected any flaws in the entire ambush line!

  Now, everyone has also come to realize the necessity of Tan Xiao's familiarity with nature: if you are not familiar with the habits of every grass and tree in the wild, even small birds and insects, how can you hide yourself so well? Especially those artillery positions that are only about 300 meters away from each other, they must be artificially built and concealed, and if they are not completely harmonious with the surrounding environment, it is difficult to avoid being discovered.

  As the Germans curiously and eagerly watched those hidden bunkers, picked up those canned boxes made into directional mines, discussed those detonators and their exceptionally clever series and parallel structures, as well as the technical and tactical details of the equipment, Bai Chongxi, walking behind the crowd, had a deathly pale face: What's the point of contending for hegemony, unifying China... If the First Division really achieves what Tan Xiao said in half a year, that all old soldiers meet the standards, then just one division can sweep away the Seventh and Fifteenth Armies of the Guangxi Army! Now he has killed Tan Xiao's heart - as long as this man is on Chiang Kai-shek's side, the Guangxi clique doesn't even have any room to fight back!

  "...Now, do you all believe that the Chinese army can rise up and sweep away the Soviet and British armies? ...The Japanese? Ha! The best generals of Japan, when they come before me, can barely make it as a lieutenant colonel...” Tan's words cut into Bai Chongxi's heart like a knife. He had always been extremely arrogant, even to the point of saying that the Whampoa Military Academy students were just a group of military officers! Now, his spirit was completely destroyed by someone who wasn't even a genuine graduate of Whampoa, but rather a mixed breed who had risen through the ranks quickly, leaving him shattered and broken.

  The difference was too great, training, tactics, equipment... Looking at the 1st Division of the Wild Army, each class had a machine gun, two submachine guns, and so many grenades and other basic equipment. Thinking about the Guangxi system, even a regiment had only one machine gun class, he felt extremely depressed, and suddenly his blood boiled! He swallowed the blood that had rushed to his mouth, stopped his shaking body, wiped his mouth, and followed everyone with difficulty. A drill actually made the big boss of Guangxi spit out blood! His eyes suddenly saw Rong Hui, and he thought of something: right, military equipment! The Guangxi army needs to be reorganized! Smash the pot and sell iron to re-equip! ... Ah, yes, isn't the 1st Division of the Wild Army willing to exchange and learn with the Guangxi army? What they can't do themselves, let their troops come to the 1st Division to learn! The Guangxi army won't be easily defeated! Although he was filled with despair in his heart, Bai Chongxi still didn't want to give up on his dream of competing for the Central Plains.

  Tan Xiao and the Germans have been discussing further military cooperation: the Germans excitedly told Tan Xiao about their plan framework! Oh my god! This time it's Tan Xiao's turn to be thoroughly shocked. Such strong support, those mines, those heavy industries, those chemical bases, those six ordnance factories that can rival the original Shenyang factory, those military equipment that far exceed the original historical levels... He even thought: give me two more years to train the national army, and if everything goes smoothly, it's hard to say whether Japan will invade China or China will take back its rivers and mountains!

  The author's progress is a bit slow, and it's taking a while to get started, but setting up this plot isn't easy...